An opportunity to comment on a life very full, with room for improvement, and little time to do it.

Friday, October 14, 2011

100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books

Growing up, one of my first jobs was working at a public library. I was and am an avid reader. I was always in the summer reading club and would race to the library to get my next book and collect my certificates at the end of the summer. When I got the job at the library, one of my tasks was to read the shelves (to make sure the books were in the right place on the shelves). This allowed me to broaden my horizon of reading books other than junior fiction. One of the first non-fiction books I read was Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss. The book relates the story of Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, who was convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and two daughters at Fort Bragg in 1970.

So recently, I spotted (of course on kottke) this list of the 100 greatest non-fiction books from the Guardian and thought I would share. I confess that I haven't read very many of these. The list is arranged by topic and is obviously Anglo-centric. So how many have you read? I am pretty sure that Anna VS and C in DC will have something to say about this list.

Art

The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes (1980) - the story of modern art, from cubism to the avant garde

The Story of Art by Ernst Gombrich (1950) -the most popular art book in history, which examines the technical and aesthetic problems confronted by artists

The Diaries of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys (1825) - "Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health," begins this extraordinarily vivid diary of the Restoration period

Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (1918) - Strachey set the template for modern biography, with this witty and irreverent account of four Victorian heroes

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929) - Graves' autobiography tells the story of his childhood and the early years of his marriage, but the core of the book is his account of the brutalities and banalities of the first world war

Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag (1964) - Sontag's proposition that the modern sensibility has been shaped by Jewish ethics and homosexual aesthetics

Mythologies by Roland Barthes (1972) - Barthes gets under the surface of the meanings of the things which surround us in these witty studies of contemporary myth-making

Orientalism by Edward Said (1978) - Said argues that romanticised western representations of Arab culture are political and condescending

Environment

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) - This account of the effects of pesticides on the environment launched the environmental movement in the US (I feel like I have read this - or that I really, really should)

The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock (1979) - Lovelock's argument that once life is established on a planet, it engineers conditions for its continued survival, revolutionised our perception of our place in the scheme of things

History

The Histories by Herodotus (c400 BC) - History begins with Herodotus's account of the Greco-Persian war

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1776) - The first modern historian of the Roman Empire went back to ancient sources to argue that moral decay made downfall inevitable (not read cover to cover, but referred to in many college history classes - so it's like I did read it)

The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1848) - A landmark study from the pre-eminent Whig historian

Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (1963) - Arendt's reports on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and explores the psychological and sociological mechanisms of the Holocaust

The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson (1963) - Thompson turned history on its head by focusing on the political agency of the people, whom most historians had treated as anonymous masses

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (1970) - A moving account of the treatment of Native Americans by the US government (Like Silent Spring, I feel like this is a book that every American should read)

Hard Times: an Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel (1970) - Terkel weaves oral accounts of the Great Depression into a powerful tapestry (you gotta love Studs, he came to a professional meeting several years ago in Chicago and had a group of archivists completely under his spell).

Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński (1982) - The great Polish reporter tells the story of the last Shah of Iran

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968) - The man in the white suit follows Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the US in a haze of LSD

Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977) - A vivid account of Herr's experiences of the Vietnam War

Literature

The Lives of the Poets by Samuel Johnson (1781) - Biographical and critical studies of 18th-century poets, which cast a sceptical eye on their lives and works

An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe (1975) - Achebe challenges western cultural imperialism in his argument that Heart of Darkness is a racist novel, which deprives its African characters of humanity

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (1976) - Bettelheim argues that the darkness of fairy tales offers a means for children to grapple with their fears (wow, Bettelheim -there's a name I haven't heard since my pursuit of my education degree)

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1938) - Orwell's clear-eyed account of his experiences in Spain offers a portrait of confusion and betrayal during the civil war.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947) -Published by her father after the war, this account of the family's hidden life helped to shape the post-war narrative of the Holocaust. (Hey, I've read this one!)

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951) - Nabokov reflects on his life before moving to the US in 1940.

The Man Died by Wole Soyinka (1971) - A powerful autobiographical account of Soyinka's experiences in prison during the Nigerian civil war.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (1975) - A vision of the author's life, including his life in the concentration camps, as seen through the kaleidoscope of chemistry.

Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000) - Sage demolishes the fantasy of family as she tells how her relatives passed rage, grief and frustrated desire down the generations.

Mind

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899) - Freud's argument that our experiences while dreaming hold the key to our psychological lives launched the discipline of psychoanalysis and transformed western culture.

Music

The Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen (1998) -Rosen examines how 19th-century composers extended the boundaries of music, and their engagement with literature, landscape and the divine.

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1781) - If western philosophy is merely a footnote to Plato, then Kant's attempt to unite reason with experience provides many of the subject headings.

Phenomenology of Mind by GWF Hegel (1807) - Hegel takes the reader through the evolution of consciousness.

Walden by HD Thoreau (1854) - An account of two years spent living in a log cabin, which examines ideas of independence and society. (I've always meant to read this . . . )

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859) - Mill argues that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others".

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1883) - The invalid Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and the triumph of the Ubermensch.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu (c500 BC) - A study of warfare that stresses the importance of positioning and the ability to react to changing circumstances. (I've read parts of this one, too, really.)

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532) - Machiavelli injects realism into the study of power, arguing that rulers should be prepared to abandon virtue to defend stability. (Read this one, too.)

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651) - Hobbes makes the case for absolute power, to prevent life from being "nasty, brutish and short".

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791) - A hugely influential defence of the French revolution, which points out the illegitimacy of governments that do not defend the rights of citizens. (I really should have read this one)

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) - Wollstonecraft argues that women should be afforded an education in order that they might contribute to society.

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) - An analysis of society and politics in terms of class struggle, which launched a movement with the ringing declaration that "proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains".

The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (1903) - A series of essays makes the case for equality in the American south.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) - De Beauvoir examines what it means to be a woman, and how female identity has been defined with reference to men throughout history.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859) - Darwin's account of the evolution of species by natural selection transformed biology and our place in the universe.

The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynmann (1965) - An elegant exploration of physical theories from one of the 20th century's greatest theoreticians.

The Double Helix by James Watson (1968) - James Watson's personal account of how he and Francis Crick cracked the structure of DNA.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976) - Dawkins launches a revolution in biology with the suggestion that evolution is best seen from the perspective of the gene, rather than the organism.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988) - A book owned by 10 million people, if understood by fewer, Hawking's account of the origins of the universe became a publishing sensation. (I was one of those people who owned this book for a while)

Society

The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pisan (1405) - A defence of womankind in the form of an ideal city, populated by famous women from throughout history.

Praise of Folly by Erasmus (1511) - This satirical encomium to the foolishness of man helped spark the Reformation with its skewering of abuses and corruption in the Catholic church.

Letters Concerning the English Nation by Voltaire (1734) - Voltaire turns his keen eye on English society, comparing it affectionately with life on the other side of the English channel.

Suicide by Émile Durkheim (1897) - An investigation into protestant and catholic culture, which argues that the less vigilant social control within catholic societies lowers the rate of suicide.

Economy and Society by Max Weber (1922) - A thorough analysis of political, economic and religious mechanisms in modern society, which established the template for modern sociology.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (1929) - Woolf's extended essay argues for both a literal and metaphorical space for women writers within a male-dominated literary tradition.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans (1941) - Evans's images and Agee's words paint a stark picture of life among sharecroppers in the US South.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963) - An exploration of the unhappiness felt by many housewives in the 1950s and 1960s, despite material comfort and stable family lives.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966) - A novelistic account of a brutal murder in a town in Kansas, which propelled Capote to fame and fortune (It might have made sense to follow up Fatal Vision with this book.)

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1973) - This analysis of incarceration in the Soviet Union, including the author's own experiences as a zek, called into question the moral foundations of the USSR. (Read for a class in college, a real uplifting tale.)

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (1975) - Foucault examines the development of modern society's systems of incarceration.

News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez (1996) - Colombia's greatest 20th-century writer tells the story of kidnappings carried out by Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel.

Travel(what no Fodor's?)

The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta (1355) - The Arab world's greatest medieval traveller sets down his memories of journeys throughout the known world and beyond.

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (1869) - Twain's tongue-in-cheek account of his European adventures was an immediate bestseller.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (1941) - A six-week trip to Yugoslavia provides the backbone for this monumental study of Balkan history.

Venice by Jan Morris (1960) - An eccentric but learned guide to the great city's art, history, culture and people.

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor (1977) - The first volume of Leigh Fermor's journey on foot through Europe - a glowing evocation of youth, memory and history.

Danube by Claudio Magris (1986) - Magris mixes travel, history, anecdote and literature as he tracks the Danube from its source to the sea.

The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald (1995) - A walking tour in East Anglia becomes a melancholy meditation on transience and decay.

Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban (2000) - Raban sets off in a 35ft ketch on a voyage from Seattle to Alaska, exploring Native American art, the Romantic imagination and his own disintegrating relationship along the way.

Letters to a Young Novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa (2002) -Vargas Llosa distils a lifetime of reading and writing into a manual of the writer's craft.

4 comments:

Actually, not much to say. I should've read Godel, Escher, Bach in college, but didn't. I read something by WEB DuBois in college, but can't remember if it was Souls or another of his books. Like pretty much everyone else, I read The Diary of a Young Girl in school. And the only other book I've read on this list was The Feminine Mystique -- for our alumnae book club shortly after she passed.

I don't read a lot of nonfiction. What I do read is mostly travel memoirs, so the travel list looks promising.

DH has probably read far more of these than I have -- I know that a number of these books are in our collection.